London – Investigators have linked one of the suspected London suicide bombers to a group of accused extremists arrested in the city last year in a foiled terrorist plot by a Pakistan-based al-Qaeda group, authorities said Wednesday.
Mohamed Sidique Khan, a 30-year-old elementary school teacher, has emerged as a key figure among the four men suspected in last week’s bombing, European and U.S. investigators said. They believe Khan was an associate of a group of Britons of Pakistani descent who were charged in April 2004 with stockpiling half a ton of bombmaking material, officials said. The 2004 plotters allegedly planned to target shopping malls and other public places, according to British counterterrorism officials.
One of those Britons now facing trial was arrested in Pakistan last year and deported. The 29-year-old allegedly played a senior role, traveling back and forth as an emissary to operatives providing leadership and expertise in Pakistan – a potential model for last week’s plot.
British investigators have mounted a worldwide search for a man seen on videotape with the four suspected suicide bombers the morning of July 7 at the Luton train station, a U.S. official said Wednesday.
The four suspected bombers are seen on closed-circuit TV leaving for a London-bound train, but the fifth man, suspected as the bombmaker, stays behind.
Investigators said the man is a British citizen, as were the four suspected suicide bombers. While he is not Anglo, he is not of Pakistani descent, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to upstage Britain in a case the two countries are cooperating on. The official added that British police investigators know the man’s name but have decided not to release it or his image.
This fifth man is suspected of being the ringleader and possibly the bombmaker, the U.S. official said, in the attacks in the London subway stem and on a double-decker bus that killed at least 52 people. Investigators described him as a highly trained person.
On Wednesday, several U.S. law enforcement officials identified one of the suspected suicide bombers as a Jamaican-born British resident named Lindsey Germaine. The other suspected bombers were of Pakistani descent and lived in working-class neighborhoods of Leeds.
Late Wednesday, British police said officers had searched a home in Aylesbury, 40 miles northwest of London and close to Luton, but would not say if anyone had been arrested.
The developments emerged as Charles Clarke, the British home secretary, offered the first official indication that British officials believed the four attackers were suicide bombers.
The attacks confronted Britons for the first time with a suicidal attack by British-born terrorists, apparently drawn from the ranks of disaffected Muslims and seeming to copycat attacks most Britons see only on their TV screens from Israel or Iraq.
Prime Minister Tony Blair said his Labor Party planned to open negotiations with other parties on new anti-terror laws.
“We will look urgently at how we strengthen the procedures to exclude people from entering the U.K. who may incite hatred or act contrary to the public good, and at how we deport such people, if they come here, more easily,” Blair said.
Muslims and Christians have recoiled from the notion that the suspected bombers had emerged from the ranks of Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims, who make up about 3 percent of the population. Mohammed Sarwar, a Muslim Labor member of Parliament, said, “We are deeply shocked that these are homegrown bombers, and a vast majority of the Muslim community condemn these barbaric attacks.”
Investigators said authorities were concerned that despite Tuesday’s raids on six homes in the Leeds area and the seizure of a car laden with explosives at Luton, some of the high-grade explosives used in the attack might still be unaccounted for.
Police said Tuesday they had seized explosives from one of the homes in Leeds. Wednesday night, police erected scaffolding and plastic sheeting around all six homes and refused to allow hundreds of residents to return to nearby buildings.
The investigators, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not allowed to talk to reporters, said it was worrisome that the London bombers had gained access to such powerful explosives, possibly highly sophisticated plastic explosives from the Balkans.
Investigators were trying urgently to find out whether the bombers had contact with al-Qaeda operatives, possibly in North Africa. Since the bombings, police have given the impression that the attackers were what Clarke on Wednesday referred to as “foot soldiers,” whose anonymity made it easier for them to slip through the net of the security services.
The New York Times contributed to this report.
